


Warrior Goddess 1 - Earth

by White Aster (white_aster)



Series: Warrior Goddess [1]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Other, Rebirth, Robots, Transformation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 06:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A senseless killing, the hand of the Allspark, and a 2010 Dodge Challenger.</p><p>AU, bot!Mikaela, warning for...very transient character death?</p><p>WORK IN PROGRESS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Warrior Goddess Notes and Timeline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Notes on the entire Warrior Goddess story arc. Please note that the posting patterns for this story have changed and this entire story arc will now be posted out of chronological order! **First part of this is for all readers' information, with timeline in a separate, spoiler-space-set-off section near the end.**

**ON "WARRIOR GODDESS" AND ITS ASSOCIATED CONTINUITY**

This fic started from one idea ("What if Mikaela was turned into a 'bot?") and expanded into a sprawling continuity that covers roughly a million years and ate not only my brain but occasionally noms on Darthneko's. The problem with a continuity this big is that I'm actually terrible at writing things in sequence. Different parts of the story inspire me at different times, and after a few years of this rolling around my head, I've got the beginning, bits of the middle, and quite a lot of the end and extended "epilogue". I've not put up a lot of the latter, because I felt it'd be confusing to read without knowing all that came before. This is reasonable, but...I'm terrible at writing things in sequence, and it's very possible that there are parts of this story that will NEVER get "fully" written.

Holding onto the later stories until I've written my way through to them sounds unnecessarily painful for all involved. I've just decided to admit that the standard format of chapters written one at a time in series is just not going to work for this series.

So this is what I'm going to do. In the interest of getting you All The Fic sooner, and of you getting the most out of it, I'm going to start posting things as I finish them, out of order. 

 

**ON "WARRIOR GODDESS 1, 2, 3, 4" STORIES**  
I have created a series on AO3, called "Warrior Goddess". It will, as I continue sorting through my backlog, contain four stories, informatively titled "Warrior Goddess 1 - Earth" (renamed version of the original Warrior Goddess fic), "Warrior Goddess 2 - War and Peace", etc. These 'fics' will be COLLECTIONS. Their 'chapters' will be fics/snippets from the relevant time period in the continuity.

**I will be posting things slowly as I work through my backlog and find completed bits of fic. I DO NOT guarantee from this point out that any of Warrior Goddess will be posted in chronological order.** However, I'll try to post things that are finished, whether they be stories or slice-of-life drabbles, so this doesn't get needlessly cliffhangery. **If you are subscribed to Warrior Goddess and DO NOT want to read everything out of order, I suggest taking a hard look at where the fics are in the timeline before reading.**

When I finish something, I'll post it as a chapter in whatever timeperiod/fic it belongs. The chapters within each fic will still be in chronological-in-fic order, so you can still read the series from start to finish in chronological order.

If this posting out of order will disturb your reading mojo, I suggest that you follow only Warrior Goddess Part 1 (again, Part 1 is the original Warrior Goddess fic, so if you are subscribed to that, you're good to go and you don't need to do anything.) WG Parts 2 and 4, in particular, involve new wars and significant major character death, just a warning. If, however, you want all of Mikaela's Excellent Adventure as it's ready, then feel free to subscribe to all the Warrior Goddess fics.

 

**ON RELATED/INSPIRED BY WORKS**  
Some related/inspired by works (such as the not-written-by-me parts of "Everything's Coming Up Kittens" on AO3, which focuses on the next generation of Cybertronians in Warrior Goddessverse - Mikaela's kids, Ironhide and Ratchet's kids, etc.) will not be collected in the three Warrior Goddess fics. This fic is not all written by me, and thus it can't be folded in. You'll still have to follow that separately. But, I will repost the things that I have written and already included in ECUK in the proper parts of the "Warrior Goddess" stories, just so that everything that I have written will be together.

 

**ON THE SPOILERIFFIC TIMELINE**  
To make all of this out-of-order posting understandable, I think it's only fair to offer everyone the full timeline. Thus, you'll find that below. This will give you the skinny on major world events through the end of Warrior Goddess. _**Reading the timeline is not required to understand the Warrior Goddess stories**_. But, if you're reading things as I post them and have questions, the timeline will provide context ("Who's Integrus?", "How did the Great War end?", "What happened during the Unicron War?", etc.) It's here if you want it, easily ignored if you don't.

**This timeline is rough, preliminary, and subject to change.** The main events have remained fixed in my head for several years, but the details are still evolving. Consider this to be stamped all over with "Work in Progress".

**Below here is the timeline. Spoilers ahead!**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**2007**  
Transformers movie events - AllSpark destroyed.

**2009**  
Sam and Mikaela graduate high school in spring. Sam attends college in fall. _Return of the Fallen_ movie events - Fallen defeated. Mikaela starts apprenticing under Ratchet.

**WARRIOR GODDESS 1 - EARTH**  
 **2010**  
Late in the year, Mikaela stops apprenticing under Ratchet, goes back to work at her dad's repair shop.

**2012**  
Mikaela's dad dies, Mikaela inherits repair shop.

**2013**  
Sam graduates college, takes on human/Cybertronian liaison duties full-time. Mikaela "dies", wakes in a Cybertronian body. Mikaela begins training in non-combat How-To-Be-A-Cybertronian classes under just about everyone and starts proper medic training with Ratchet.

**2014**  
Mikaela gets in her first fight with a Decepticon. Mikaela gets nod from Ironhide and Prime to get full combat training. Mikaela is accepted as a full, untrained Autobot and starts Autobot bootcamp, taking on base duties and slowly being introduced to long-range and then short-range combat. More Autobots arrive, and to forestall uncomfortable questions about where she came from, Mikaela takes on the designation "Firebrand" and Ratchet spreads the story that she was found on Earth, her memory cores wiped clean, to explain her shaky Cybertronian and lack of knowledge about Cybertron and its customs.

**2015-2050**  
While Mikaela trains and becomes more firmly an Autobot, Decepticons start trading technology for energon-capable energy. Autobots' relationship with the American government becomes strained as Decepticon-aligned countries start reverse-engineering weapons and gain military advantage. Optimus finally agrees that Americans need Cybertronian-level weapons, too. Meanwhile, Earth gets less and less hospitable, with wars on the horizon over water, food, and energy. Autobots begin chaperoning colonists to other systems in the Exodus. They try to be fair about this, but distrust is sown by perceived favoritism in who gets to go. Human distrust grows to the point that the Autobots are getting attacked, now with Cybertronian-based weapons that do considerably more damage. Megatron gloats, continually playing one side off the other and encouraging anti-Autobot sentiment. Other Decepticons start wondering what the hell they're still doing on this dying ball of dirt.

**2049**  
Mikaela downloads the internet to take a little light reading with her when she, Bee, and Sam head out on what will be the last Exodus transport.

**~2050**  
Earth goes boom. Humans tampering with Cybertronian tech (possibly attempting to build space bridge technology) manage to open a 1m-wide black hole on the surface of the earth. This lasts for approximately 1 minute, sucks in a good chunk of Siberia and the earth's atmosphere. As the tremendous gravity forces heat up the matter falling into the black hole, a huge explosion of superheated plasma destroys most of the earth's atmosphere, irradiates everything else, and changes earth's orbit. Between all these things, all oxygen-needing life is annihilated. Cybertronians are left standing on a dead, barren planet with a v. different gravity profile and almost no atmosphere. This is NOT good for Autobot/Decepticon relations, and there are several major battles as both sides struggle to gather resources and decide what to do next.

**2052**  
After delivering Sam and the rest of the colonists to the Gliese system, Mikaela and Bee return. Mikaela does NOT take the destruction of Earth well and is a very angry being for the next several hundred years.

**WARRIOR GODDESS 2 - WAR AND PEACE**  


**~2100**  
As the last of Earth's resources dwindle, Megatron begins acting erratically. Launches off into space looking for something that is "calling" him. Starscream leads the Decepticons while he's gone and slowly winds down the fighting, instead focusing on sending out scouts to look for another promising planet to sustain them. Both Autobots and Decepticons (separately) make plans to leave Earth.

**2125**  
Megatron returns from his vision quest...towing a huge chunk of Dark Energon. He has well and truly drunk the purple kool-aid and is determined that the army can use the Dark Energon as fuel and wipe out the Autobots, then take over the universe. Starscream disagrees, kills him, and takes over as Decepticon leader, with Soundwave as 2IC. Starscream asks Prime for a formal truce. Optimus Prime agrees, and so begins the Long Peace.

**~2125-10,000ish - The Long Peace**  
Autobots and Decepticons have both settled some, building colonies in several places, sometimes even on the same planets. There's still energy shortages, but everyone's tired of fighting and being pretty good about sharing. Folks even begin to have sparklings again. Mikaela spends part of this time in a one-bot scout ship working for the Exploration Force, looking for habitable planets. She enjoys the time alone to think and become a little less angry. 

**~10,000-200,000 - The Unicron War begins**  
Around 10,000AD is the first known appearance of Unicron's Swarm. These start out as fairly simple and dumb (though dangerous in numbers) mechanoid creatures that run on Dark Energon, easily destroyed and seen as a nuisance more than anything. Slowly they gain complexity, and as the years pass, Cybertronians realize that these are the ever-evolving fore-runners of Unicron's army. 

**~200,000-250,000**  
The Unicron War begins in earnest, with enemies engaging (and often over-running) Cybertronian colonies. Many Cybertronians take to space again, wandering from system to system, occasionally attempting to make a stand against the Swarm and failing as the Swarm's numbers increase and its tactics become more devious. Many remaining Cybertronians are killed in the course of the War, including Optimus Prime. The Matrix passes on, almost imperceptibly, to Hot Rod, who is quickly killed as well in the same battle. The Matrix passes on, surprisingly, to Soundwave, who takes on the name of Integrus Prime and forges a true unified Cybertronian force to fight Unicron's Swarm. Mikaela spends much of this time in a strike unit led by Thundercracker on a ship called the _Scythe_ , where she eventually earns the respect of the rest of her unit for her medicking skills and occasional bouts of berserkery during groundfighting. 

**~250,000**  
The War by now going very badly, the last of the Cybertronians are starting to run short of energon and supplies by the time that a planet-sized Unicron appears on the scene. Integrus Prime is captured and held aboard Unicron, where Unicron siphons and corrupts the energy from the Matrix to produce more Dark Energon to feed his army. Unicron heads for the abandoned Cybertron.

**~250,005**  
Mikaela and a very small and bedraggled team (including Ravage) head into Unicron in search of Integrus. They manage to free Integrus from Unicron's tortures enough that Integrus can trigger the Matrix's power. The Matrix amplifies Integrus' own technopathic powers a millionfold, and he is able to, for a critical amount of time, take over Unicron's systems and set them to self-destruction. Unicron's spark is destroyed, and without his consciousness animating the Swarm, the Swarm collapses and the Unicron War ends.

**250,005-300,000**  
Cybertronians begin gathering on Cybertron again. Energon shortages are still rampant, but they eke by, and the scientists left (headed by Starscream) turn their attention to how to safely make use of the massive quantities of Dark Energon contained in Unicron's planetary form. Eventually, Starscream is able to find a way to filter away Unicron's taint and make the energon usable. The Cybertronians use this energon to fill Cybertron's planetary engines and, with some fancy timing, get Cybertron to fall into orbit around a nice, cheery star in a system with useful resources and no current occupants. With solar energy plentiful and Cybertron's solar converters repaired, the fuel crisis is averted. During this time, Mikaela becomes Integrus' aide and is intimately involved with organizing the rebuilding of Cybertron.

**WARRIOR GODDESS 3 - CYBERTRON AND BEYOND**  


**300,000-400,000**  
With fuel no longer an issue, Cybertron begins a new period of rebuilding. Integrus encourages many to have sparklings again, and leads by example. Cybertronians begin making diplomatic overtures to other species and repairing their galactic image.

**~400,000-~1,000,000**  
New Cybertronian golden age. Peace, prosperity, sparklings. There are intermittent contacts with other hostile races (mostly the Quintessons and their slave races), but under Integrus the Cybertronians are not expansionists. They keep to their own system and defend it well. The peace allows many of those involved in the Great War to take on new, civilian jobs, or to strike out on their own.

**WARRIOR GODDESS 4 - THE SECOND QUINTESSON WAR**  


**~1,000,000-1,000,010**  
A huge, Quintesson-planted bomb goes off at the center of the Cybertronian capital, in an attempt to destroy the Matrix and to demoralize the Cybertronian population in advance of an invasion. Mikaela and Integrus, as well as tens of thousands of others, are killed. The Matrix passes to Starscream, who quickly figures out the Quintessons' plan and calls for all military-trained Cybertronians and veterans of the Great War to reassemble to defend Cybertron. When the Quintessons reach Cybertron, they find one PISSED OFF planetary defense force that not only destroys them but chases them back into Quintesson space. Starscream leads the Cybertronian army on a blitzkrieg war against the Quintessons, pushing them back into their own space, destroying Quintesson fleets and interstellar capabilities as they go, taking over Quintessa, eradicating the Judge class, freeing every Quintesson slave race, and generally taking the Quintesson empire apart at the seams and telling the remains to stay the hell out of Cybertron's affairs. Cybertronians leave the remaining Quintessons to deal with their revolting previously-slave races and head home.


	2. Prelude - Burned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikaela is hurt on the job.

_Set post-RotF, and assumes that Mikaela is apprenticing under Ratchet._

* * *

It all started with an accident.

Energon was corrosive. Really corrosive. Not instantly-kill-you corrosive, but enough that it would, given enough time, happily eat through organic materials. Like skin.

Ratchet had warned her about it up front, as soon as he'd agreed to teach her anything about Cybertronian medicine. She'd nodded through all his stern warnings and the demonstration of just how corrosive they were talking about (a drop of circulation-grade energon ate a hole through half an inch of mystery meat from the mess in under five minutes. Coolant and hydraulic fluids and the solvents that cleaned everything up were more give-you-a-rash than melt-your-face, but they weren't anything she'd like to bathe in, either.) Mikaela had pointed out that she was used to working with toxic and corrosive fluids, that she'd use full protective gear, that she'd be careful, no problem.

Still, accidents happened.

It hadn't even been a serious accident. Half a year into her training, half a year of more hours than not of each day spent keeping up with a tireless mechanical mentor, Mikaela had been sorting spare parts. It was an arm that had seen better days, ending in a bent strut and torn wiring. She wasn't sure where the arm had come from and hadn't asked, just followed Ratchet's instructions to strip it down to its component parts and separate them according to how many hours of swearing would be required to make them work again. She'd watched Ratchet clean it before he'd set her to it. She'd watched the solvent run energon-bright, then clear again as it flushed out the circulatory lines. 

Normally, that would have flushed through the periodic energon reservoirs that dotted every mech's frame. There were hundreds of them, integrated into every limb and system, providing a store of energy if the main fuel pump was compromised or the circulatory processors needed to reboot. There were three reservoirs in the arm she was working on. She'd identified them as she'd hauled off the outer armor. She'd even noticed that one appeared damaged. It wasn't leaking anything, though, so she'd thought nothing of it as she'd started disassembling everything else. 

Being jostled as she tugged and pried and swore at the parts around it must have aggravated the damage. Damage which, she'd notice later, had jammed shut the valve that should have allowed the flush into the reservoir. The result was that when she pulled the reservoir free from its housing, the metal was fragile enough to split in her small human grip. Residual pressure splurted liquid over her glove, down her wrist and forearm. She'd been wearing gloves and long-sleeved overalls, of course, so she'd just sworn as she'd felt the break, thinking that the warm sensation dripping down her arm was the solvent. Then she turned her hand to look at the mess and two things happened at once: she saw the bright magenta glow of undiluted energon and felt the heat of the chemical burn starting on her wrist, where the stuff had seeped between her glove and her sleeve to find bare skin.

She'd jumped, cursed, and dropped the reservoir. She tore off the soaked glove, yanking at her overall zip so she could get her arm through the energon-contaminated sleeve and said sleeve away from her skin. This, of course, smeared energon in a line down the inside of her arm, but she was less worried about that than the now really alarming burning pain coming from her wrist.

_Get it off_ was the only thing running through her head. Luckily, the largest body of liquid was right next to her and actually the proper thing to use: the solvent bath she'd been tossing gunked up parts into. The solvent bath itself was a welded tub about ten feet across and five feet high, with about three feet of solvent in it: easy carrying size for Ratchet but more like a small swimming pool for her. She'd reached her arm over the edge, but couldn't reach down quite far enough to dunk her whole arm. 

"Ratchet!" she'd yelled, as she gripped the edge of the tub and hauled herself over. She landed awkwardly on the other side, feet sliding on something already soaking under the surface, but her grip on the side of the tub kept her from actually falling. She crouched down to dunk her arm in the solvent, the pain too much to worry about the fluid that was rapidly soaking into her overalls and her boots.

"Mikaela?" Ratchet appeared, optics spiralling in on her in confusion.

Mikaela gritted her teeth. "Energon burn," she said, holding up her wrist above fluid level. The pain wasn't getting worse now that the energon was dissolved away, but there were angry red blisters all along her wrist and trailing up her inner arm. 

"Hold still," Ratchet barked. She froze first at the commanding tone, then in purely human fear of Big Things Coming At Her Really Fast as the medic's hand blocked out the overhead lights. He reached right into the bath, picking up her and the handful of parts she was standing on in a loose, careful cage of fingers. She sat down hard against his finger as he moved, jostling her, and then bringing her down fast enough to make the bottom drop out of her stomach. The lights reappeared as he gently opened his hand and pulled it back, and she blinked, just in time to see where she was (right under the water pipe that Ratchet used as a faucet) and screw her eyes shut before water pelted down on her head like a lukewarm waterfall. She gasped and scuttled back out of the worst of it, then yanked her overalls off, leaving her in her t-shirt, shorts, and very waterlogged boots. 

"Make sure you rinse completely," Ratchet's voice said, over the patter of water.

She certainly wasn't going to argue, moving back under for as long as she could hold her breath. When she emerged, the skin of her legs no longer crawled, and her wrist, though painful, was manageable. She clawed her hair back out of her face one-handed and surveyed the damage: angry-red welts all along her wrist and up her arm, the sheen of rising blisters, and it hurt in that horrible way that burns always did, but all in all, not too terrible. She'd gotten worse once when she'd laid her arm against a hot tailpipe.

She looked up at Ratchet, wringing water out of her hair. "Sorry. Didn't mean to freak out on you, there."

Ratchet hmmphed, the rings of his optics shifting fitfully in a way she knew meant he was scanning her within an inch of her life. "Your response was perfectly justified. How do you feel?"

"Okay," she said, wringing water out of her shirt. "Wrist hurts, but not bad. It's just blisters. Thanks for the express lift down here, by the way."

"You are welcome. Dizziness, headache, changes in visual perception?"

"Uh. No?" She looked up at him, puzzled, as he transformed down into his vehicle mode and opened the passenger-side door for her. "You're gonna make me go to the hospital for some blisters? Seriously?"

"No," Ratchet said, "I am going to make you go to the hospital for observation for the possible toxic aftereffects of several skin-permeable compounds dissolved in that solvent you took a bath in. Get in."

Mikaela swallowed. "Oh. I hadn't thought about that. I guess that wasn't too smart, huh?" She hauled herself up into Ratchet's cab with her good hand. She squelched into his front seat, but figured that he'd asked for it.

The door closed behind her, and Ratchet blipped his siren as he pulled out of the medbay. His voice rang through the cab, surprisingly gentle. "On the contrary. Undiluted energon could have caused you serious injury in the time it would have taken you to climb off the berth and retrieve cleaner solvent. You reacted appropriately."

High praise, coming from Ratchet. The afternoon sun shone in warm through the window. It felt good on her wet skin. She rubbed her opposite arm with her good hand. "Do you really think I'm gonna get sick?"

Ratchet hmmed thoughtfully. "Unknown. Several of our fluids have no known safe human exposure limit. The bath would have significantly diluted them, and your exposure was short. My expectation is that lasting damage is unlikely, but I would rather have you under a human medical facility's care, just to be sure."

She sighed. "I really feel fine. Really."

"The effects could be delayed," Ratchet replied placidly.

She winced at the thought of showing up at the base emergency room, soaked to the skin, in an ancient American Chopper shirt and cutoffs. She caught a look at herself in the rearview mirror (still dripping, her hair tie lost somewhere, and a smudge of grease on one cheek that had somehow survived the deluge when she'd washed off.) She stared at herself in the mirror for a long moment, then snorted a laugh.

"Mikaela?"

Now that she'd started thinking about how she must have looked, jumping into the solvent bath, or Ratchet plopping her under the faucet like a muddy puppy, she couldn't quite keep the laughter down. "I'm...I'm ok, I'm fine. It's just...come on, you have to admit, it's pretty funny. I look like a drowned rat."

Ratchet paused. "I will take your word for it."

That, for some reason, only made her laugh harder.

"Are you certain you are all right? Euphoria could be a neurological side-effect of--"

Mikaela slashed her hands apart in a "no", gasping, "I'm not sick. Honest!"

"Oh, I don't believe I can trust your judgment, as you are obviously having some sort of seizure--"

"I am not!" Mikaela wasn't sure if she should be alarmed or not. It wasn't as if Ratchet didn't have a history of jumping to conclusions about human physiology.

"--and are an unreliable witness." He vocalized a sigh. "Probably neurological damage. Such a shame...."

Mikaela opened her mouth to protest and then stopped, his tone finally sinking in. Ratchet didn't always do humor well, and it was often as dry as the desert outside, but she was getting better at identifying it. "Oh, totally. I mean, really, you break one assistant, and who's gonna want to give you another one?"

Another sigh. "And I was SO hoping for a few more impertinent humans for Christmas. And an ultrasonic saw. And a pony."

She was sure that the emergency room people had wondered why she was laughing as they pulled up to the entrance.

There'd been nothing wrong with her. Her wrist and arm had hurt for awhile, but she'd wrapped it and worked around it. Ratchet had watched her more closely for several weeks. She'd gotten used to him scanning her at least once a day, but eventually things had returned to normal, and she'd almost forgotten about the incident completely.

Months later, though, when Ratchet told her he couldn't teach her any more, she was absolutely sure that _he_ hadn't.


	3. Death and Rebirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikaela dies (briefly), wakes (confusedly), and goes for help (very carefully).

She hadn't even seen it coming. That was what she would always remember: that it had all happened so fast.

She'd stopped back into the shop to do paperwork, of all things. Sam had tried to coax her into coming home with him, but she wasn't sure if his heart was in it, and she had some estimates to get out first thing the next day, and taxes were going to be due in a week or so, and she had about a foot and a half of paperwork still sitting on her desk, and there was no way she could find time to work on it all during the day. Luckily, she was too busy actually fixing cars then, and ever since her dad had died, well...it'd all been hers. Shop and business and money and paperwork and taxes and lingering grief and all.

Still, she'd been okay. Not great and certainly not happy to be spending her evening with a beer and tax instructions rather than her man, but still. Not bad.

She'd gone in through the side door to the garage, shutting and locking it behind her. It wasn't the best neighborhood after dark, after all. She'd turned and started walking toward the office, weaving around the Challenger that Mr. Thatcher'd be picking up in the morning in the dark.

Later, she'd find out that the thieves had come in through the office and had already emptied the till and grabbed the shotgun she kept there for self-defense. Later, she'd realize that they'd found the safe under the workbench and broken it open, shoving the money into their pockets and leaving everything that didn't look valuable strewn across the garage floor. Later, she'd learn that they'd been spooked by her coming in and hid behind the Challenger.

Later, she'd learn that she'd been walking right toward one of them in the dark, when he, strung out and shaking, had shot her with two barrels of buckshot at point-blank range in the chest.

She'd jumped, at the noise more than anything. She'd tried to gasp and couldn't catch her breath. In the dark, she'd been confused more than anything, seeing nothing but dark shapes moving. A wave of vertigo swept over her, and she'd barely felt her knees, then the rest of her hit the floor.

Later, she'd find out that she had all but fallen on the canister with the Allspark in it, from where it'd rolled after being tossed on the floor. She hadn't felt it.

She hadn't felt much much of anything, other than surprise. She hadn't even had time to hurt before everything went black.

\--------

INITIAL BOOT SEQUENCE: INITIATED  
OS: ONLINE  
MEMORY CORE: BOOTED...99.99995% FREE.  
SYSTEMS CHECK...PRIMARY...SECONDARY: ....ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL  
SENSOR CHECK...PRIMARY...SECONDARY...TERTIARY: ...ALL SENSORS FUNCTIONAL....  
AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: ENERGON LEVELS: 0.005%  
AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: BOOTING IN POWERSAVE MODE

\--------

She woke to darkness and confusion. Confusion, first. Where was she? What was going on? Why was it dark...and quiet? What...why couldn't she _see_?

  
EXTERNAL SENSORS ACTIVATED

"What the HELL?"

QUERY UNRECOGNIZED REPEAT QUERY Y/N?

"The fu--CHRIST!"

Suddenly, like a punch of information to the gut, she could see. She could see _everything_. She knew the ambient temperature, humidity, background radiation, and chemical composition of the air around her. She knew the ambient light levels, the shape of the room and everything in it. She detected electromagnetic waves flying all around her, everything from buzzing gamma and x-rays to UV to infrared and on into slow, lazy radio waves. She concentrated on one of them for a moment and got an earful of rapid-fire Spanish and a cheery jingle.

"Enough, enough, _fuck_!"

  
EXTERNAL SENSORS DEACTIVATED

"NO! Just...dial it back!"

  
EXTERNAL EM SENSORS ACTIVATED. SENSITIVITY: 60%

She looked around, cautiously, and quickly realized a few things through the confusion. First, she was in the garage. Second, she could see in 360 degrees. Third, her body was slumped on the floor, seeping the last of its heat into the concrete. Her face looked surprised, her hair a mess.

Her body. Her body that was over _there_ while she was over _here_.

She stared at herself for a good long moment, trying to parse all of this. All right, she thought. I'm dead. I'm dead? Am I a ghost or something?

SYSTEMS CHECK: ... ... ...ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL

"What does that _mean_?"

A long list flowed across her mind's eye, the knowledge falling into her mind in what should have been a blinding avalanche. There were tens of thousands of status reports, and she vaguely thought that there was no way she'd understand or remember them all, but she didn't have any trouble at all. She read them and started to understand.

She had 360 degree vision because she had EM sensors situated in all directions. She had a length of 197.7 inches, a width of 75.7 inches, an interior volume of 93.9 cubic feet (and she sensed a quick calculation being done in the back of her mind, as those dimensions were translated from some other units). She had a wheelbase of 116 inches.

She had a _wheelbase_. She had _transformation circuits_. She made the mistake of thinking too hard about those and felt parts she didn't even know she had starting to shift and whirl and reassemble and she quickly thought nonononononononoABORT until everything settled back down on its...her...wheels.

She was a 2010 Infernal Red Crystal Dodge Challenger. This, she thought, was the most bizarre self-image issue she'd _ever_ had, and that was saying something.

Vaguely, she realized that she should probably be more concerned about all of this. Worried? Upset? Angry? Something? Could mechs (and she was a MECH or stuck in a mech or...a MECH!) be in shock?

SYSTEMS CHECK: ...

"Oh, shut up."

SYSTEMS CHECK: ABORTED

The garage was very quiet. Something in her dead body shifted.

Oh god, she needed to get out of here. Away from...that. She was confused. She was sure she was missing something. She felt oddly weak. She needed help.

That last brought up an image of Sam, of Bee, of Optimus, of _Ratchet_. YES. The Autobots. The Autobots would know what to do. She had to go to them.

She found the right command and, determined not to think too hard about it, turned over her engine. Her engine sounded good, if she did say so herself. She released her brakes, felt herself roll a bit, then applied them again. It wasn't too hard, she thought. Just like getting to know a new car from the driver's seat. With...a much better view around her. Right. No problem.

Her thinking was getting...odd. Vague. She had to get out of the garage. She had to get to the 'Bots.

...the garage door was down.

She didn't really want to ram through it, though she was pretty sure she could. That would make noise, and though this was a pretty deserted block at night, and though everyone seemed to have ignored the SHOTGUN BLAST, she didn't want to draw attention to herself. God, what would she do if someone came? Say oh, don't worry about that body on the floor, I'm not using it anymore?

She reined in her strangely scattered thoughts. (Was something wrong? AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: ENERGON LEVELS: 0.004% Oh.)

She needed to get out of the garage. She couldn't hit the button in this form, and she wasn't going to try to transform in here. She wouldn't fit. Her senses zeroed in on the door controls, and the analysis her sensors spat back out made her want to slap herself.

INITIATE LONGWAVE EM EMISSION: VARIABLE FREQUENCY

Halfway through the screech of radiowaves, the door started sliding up on its tracks. She felt like weeping with relief.

Yes, yes, yes, she thought, as she backed, oh so carefully, out, turning her wheels to align herself on the street. It...wasn't too hard. If she didn't think about it too hard. And she was finding it hard to think about anything too hard.

She started rolling down the street, slowly, carefully. She got to an intersection and paused. Which way? Where...where was she going? To the Autobots, yes, but how to get there?

She should know this, she thought. She _should_. Why didn't she? She stuffed down the panic at that thought, searching her memory. Which way was safety and friends?

She turned right. Then right again at the next intersection. Then forward, to a light. She took in the color of it, knowing that it meant something. Something about right and wrong, but she couldn't remember which was which. The cars streaming in front of her through the intersection had a green light. She had a red one. Green must mean permission to go. She waited until the cars stopped and her light turned green. She turned left.

Driving around all the other cars was completely nervewracking. There were so many of them, and they were moving so fast, and she knew there were _rules_ to this, to moving on the streets like this, but she couldn't _remember_ , and she was terrified of hurting someone. She was very aware of her width, her mass, her momentum. She settled for doing what everyone else seemed to be doing, and eventually her internal safety compass told her to head north, then east, through the maze of streets and buildings. She knew where to go, knew each turning when she saw it, though she couldn't picture it beforehand in her mind.

AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: ENERGON LEVELS: 0.002%

She was very close. She knew it. She made one last turn, heading down a long, dusty road. There was a gate in the way, and men guarding it. That was all right, she thought. She expected them to be there. They would...they would be all right. She rolled up to the gate and stopped, waiting. That was what she was supposed to do here: wait.

Something was wrong. Not with the gate. With her. She...should know more than this. She really should, she thought. Why couldn't she think more than two steps ahead?

One of the men in the gatehouse looked over at her, blinking in surprise. She didn't quite understand why, though she knew she should, _dammit_. "Uh," he said. "ID?"

"I'm...Mikaela. I need...I need to see Ratchet. Or Bee. Or Optimus. Ironhide. Lennox. _Sam_. Anyone....really."

The man kept his eyes on her as he spoke urgently into the radio on his shoulder. ("We've got one UNBE at Gate 1, code yellow, request hard backup...." her sensors picked out of the air.) Other sensors picked up the speeding of his pulse, the increase in his respiration. He was afraid of her. She almost laughed. She felt like she could barely keep air in her tires, she was so tired.

More men came, 53 seconds later, jogging up with weapons and surrounding her. They were frightened of her, too, hearts thumping. She heard engines starting up, somewhere ahead, moving toward her. That...that was good, right? She thought she recognized the tune of those engines.

She was really, really tired. She just wanted...to...

AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: ENERGON LEVELS: 0.001%  
AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: POWER SAFETY SHUTDOWN IMMINENT

She wasn't aware she'd shut off her EM sensors until the gate started opening, the sound almost drowned out by the roar of three engines and more behind. She onlined them again to see the wonderful, wonderful sight of Ironhide, followed by Optimus and Ratchet heading for her. They transformed right before the gate, the earth shaking beneath her tires as their feet came down on the pavement. Ironhide had his weapons up, charged, the whine of his capacitors registering to her sluggish sensors as a possible danger. Her system threw up a flurry of warnings that she batted down. "Iron...hide...."

AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: POWER SAFETY SHUTDOWN IMMINENT

"That's my name. Stay right where you are, and state your designation," Ironhide growled, his cannon not moving from her.

AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: POWER SAFETY SHUTDOWN IMMINENT

"Help. I'm...." She wanted to reach out to him, to Optimus, who was right behind him, to Ratchet, who was scanning her, her failing systems told her, even as they spoke. That desire manifested in what was probably supposed to be one hand transforming from her undercarriage. She couldn't quite make it, her mass just shifting sluggishly, unbalancing her, making her front right side dip and Ironhide's cannon start to glow.

"FREEZE."

"I'm...Mikaelaaaa...."

AUTONOMIC SYSTEMS WARNING: POWER SAFETY SHUTDOWN INITIATED

Everything went black. Again.


	4. Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ironhide is suspicious, Ratchet is perplexed, and Bee has a minor breakdown.

It had been a long time since Ratchet had had cause to doubt his own sensors. However, his initial scan of their mystery visitor made him pause, scan again, read the results twice, run a scan diagnostic, then scan _again_....

"Ironhide?" Optimus said behind him.

"Scanning.... No explosives or hidden weapons." Ironhide reluctantly powered down his cannons. "No weapons at all that I can see. He was running silent, though. No so much as a background hum on his comms."

"Ratchet?"

"Maybe his comms are down," Ratchet murmured. He read his scans _again_ , then said, "I have no idea, Optimus. He's pinging back with an ID key, not a designation. He's got a Cybertronian frame, but made out of human-made components. Very lightly armored, and--again--Earth metals only. No weapons, and if his comm's running silent, then he's not talking to anyone, as he doesn't have a cell or wireless card."

"...Sir?" one of the mystery 'bot's circle of guards said, still covering the car with his weapon.

Optimus looked at Ironhide, who said dryly, "He won't blow up. If he's a Decepticon trap, he's not that obvious of one."

Ratchet spread his hands. "Well, he can't do anything like this. He's got about a sensor check's worth of energon in him, probably has since he turned off the main road. Might as well bring him in. I'll do a full systems scan--yes, Ironhide, I'll code check him--before waking him back up."

Optimus nodded. "Agreed."

Ironhide sighed. "Fine." He gestured the humans out of the way. "At ease, men. Give me room." The humans backed off, and Ironhide picked up the mystery mech carefully, balancing the car between hand and shoulder thoughtfully. Two frames creaked in the still evening air, and Ratchet was almost too distracted by the puzzle the mech represented to aim a ::Sounding rusty there, old warrior:: at Ironhide, along with a teasing reminder about his next maintenance appointment.

Ironhide's reply was a familiar growled ::Not that rusty, sparkling.:: Aloud, Ironhide muttered as he shifted the weight of his burden and headed towards the building Ratchet was using as a med bay, "Fairly dense. He won't be a lightweight, whoever he is."

::One of our special ops agents?:: Optimus suggested, even as he stayed physically behind to talk to the guards. ::Running silent, perhaps?::

::Maybe,:: Ironhide replied. ::We do have some unaccounted for. I guess we could have missed him, if he came down somewhere on the other side of the planet.::

::Doesn't explain why he's not much more than steel and aluminum.:: Ratchet pointed out. ::No Cybertronian alloys at all.::

::...Earth repaired?:: Ironhide's query ended with the codeglyph for "faint doubt", though.

:: _No_ Cybertronian alloys at all.:: Ratchet pointed out. ::His _spark cage_ is made of _steel_.::

Ironhide turned to look at him. ::Impossible. Unless...Primus help us...the humans found a way to put sparks in human-made frames? But where would they get the spark?::

Optimus' thoughtful noise broke across their chatter. ::Hmm. He...or perhaps she...did say she was Mikaela, correct?::

Ironhide snorted. ::Had to be lying. Or delusional. Honestly, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Perhaps the words weren't connected, and he was just repeating something he'd heard?::

Optimus was silent for a long moment, a glyph for "searching, please wait for reply" trailing over the comm. ::I do not see anything relevant in a preliminary search of the Martix's memories. However, Mikaela isn't answering her phone.:: He switched to a broader, more heavily-encrypted channel. ::Bumblebee, report.::

Bumblebee's response was immediate, heavily-sprinkled with shorthand codes and glyphs for complete attention and mild curiousity. Everyone used such shorthand to some degree to indicate nuance, but Bumblebee was particularly bad about it. It was a habit that he'd acquired when his vocalizer had been broken: the tendency to visual communication had carried over into his comm habits. Ratchet suspected that the amount of time Bumblebee spent around the Internet and its "emoticons" had not helped. ::All clear, Optimus,:: Bumblebee reported. ::I'm at the Witwicky's. Sam is inside. We got back about an hour ago from a movie with Mikaela. Something wrong?::

::Perhaps. Mikaela was with you tonight? When did you last see her?::

::103 minutes ago. She left the theater on her bike. She said she needed to go back into the shop.::

::Verify her location, personally. We have an unidentified Cybertronian visitor at the base who mentioned her name before falling into stasis. Approach with caution.::

::Is she in danger, sir?:: Bumblebee's reply was punctuated with glyphs for worry and concern. Mikaela had impressed many of them with her courage and curiousity, but she and Sam were good friends with Bumblebee. Sam's and Bumblebee's extended absences to Washington DC to attend to their ambassadorial duties had altered the humans' relationship in some way, but the friendship remained.

::Unknown,:: Optimus replied. ::But do not bring Sam with you, just in case.::

::Yes, sir.::

::Ratchet, keep us all apprised on this frequency.::

::Of course,:: Ratchet said, as he and Ironhide entered their makeshift med bay.

"You want him on the table like this?" Ironhide gestured to the car with his free hand.

Ratchet frowned as the logistics of this. He brought up the physical scan he'd done a few minutes ago. "His ports aren't terribly accessible in that form. Let me take a look...."

Said ports were, indeed, tucked in the mech's undercarriage, past the struts and bulk of transformed arms and legs. Ratchet was fairly sure a data cable could be woven through, but he couldn't get his fingers close enough to attach it. He vented in frustration, then, as a thought occurred to him, gestured for Ironhide to set the mech on the table and checked the duty roster. ::Wheelie?::

::Yeah, boss?:: Their newest Autobot's reply was almost immediate. He was off-duty, but obviously hadn't been recharging.

::Could you come to med bay? I need someone small.::

::Sure. Epps is kicking my ass at Soulcalibur anyway. Be right there.::

Ratchet couldn't help but smile to himself. Wheelie was painfully young, still, but the Decepticon had washed off him nicely. Once they'd gotten it through his head that asking him to work wasn't punishment but an opportunity, he'd showed a ferocious determination to prove himself. Ratchet had found the kid to be smart and creative and had taken to employing him in the med bay whenever he needed an extra pair of small hands. Wheelie had surprised him by taking immediately to the detailed work. He'd told Ratchet once that he liked the job because it was important but always different, so he didn't get bored. Ratchet had fond hopes that once that youthful restlessness burned out, Wheelie would train up into a solid medic.

A few minutes later, Wheelie's tiny truck form zipped in. He whistled as he accelerated across the floor and transformed to stand by Ratchet's foot. "Who's the new guy? What's wrong with him?"

"We're not sure," Ratchet said, as Wheelie climbed up the table leg and flipped up onto the top. Ratchet attached a data cable to a datapad and handed the terminal end to Wheelie. "We need to get a cable in him, but his ports are all tucked in his undercarriage."

"Gotcha. Two small hands to the rescue." Wheelie beamed up at him and scuttled underneath the car with the cable trailing behind him. "I see 'em...I think...no wait, not like that...fuck, fragging...how about...yeah...just a biiiiiit...there!"

The datapad's screen flickered as it connected. Ratchet cycled through the medical access codes until the mech's OS accepted one of them (an extremely old one, oddly enough) and allowed him access. Vitals and status reports streamed across the screen. Ratchet started a diagnostic for hostile code.

Wheelie crawled back out and mimed dusting off his hands. "Tight fit. Anything else I can do, boss?"

::Our guest is perfectly fine, physically. I'm checking his code now.:: Ratchet said to Ironhide and Optimus. Then, to Wheelie, "Get an energon feed ready. If he checks out, he'll need fifty units."

"Fifty! Man, he's been busy." Wheelie trotted around the car to leap up and uncoil the feedline hanging down from the wall.

The datapad beeped, its diagnostic finished. ::No hostile programs, and the rest of his code is clean. Suspiciously so, even.::

Ironhide, who'd moved to the side, weapons still at half-charge, shifted on his feet. ::How so?::

::Just that. His code's practically pristine. No patches, no workarounds, nothing corrupted. No wear and tear at all. His logs might be a different story. I don't know if they've been tampered with or corrupted, but they only start about an hour ago.::

::Strange. Could he have been hacked?:: Optimus asked.

::Possible. Soundwave is still unaccounted for. Perhaps he was captured and escaped.:: Ratchet hesitantly punctuated that thought with a glyph for reasonable doubt. There were too many things out of place here. He didn't like it. Ratchet tapped a finger against the table as he thought.

::Or he was released,:: Ironhide pointed out. ::Perhaps he's a Decepticon mole.::

::Either option doesn't explain his oddly human physical characteristics,:: Optimus pointed out.

::Maybe the humans made the body and the Decepticons transferred a spark over and _then_ wiped him to be a mole.:: Ironhide suggested.

Ratchet and Optimus were silent, until Ironhide said defensively, ::Well, it's all _I_ can think of.::

Ratchet made a decision. ::Sir, requesting permission to access his memory core at medical access level 1.::

Optimus was silent for a long moment. He took such invasions of privacy just as seriously as Ratchet did. His response was formal, ::Your justification, Chief Medical Officer?::

::Primary, safety of our personnel: determine that the patient is not a threat to current personnel prior to reactivation. Secondary, patient welfare: determine if his logs are corrupted, since that corruption could spread if I reactivate him without dealing with the error.:: Those two would be enough to satisfy them both, but just for completeness' sake, Ratchet paused, then continued. ::Tertiary, ally welfare: determine what contact, if any, the patient has had with Mikaela Banes and if he has any information about her immediate welfare.::

"Uh...Ironhide, Ratchet?" Wheelie's voice was uncharacteristically serious, and Ratchet looked down. Wheelie came around the side of the unconscious mech, looking at his hands. "I just noticed...the color of his paint hides it pretty well, but.... He's got blood on him." Wheelie rubbed his small fingers together and then held them up. "Human blood."

Ironhide growled, his weapons charging to full.

Ratchet grimly sent a databurst of the last ten seconds to Optimus, who responded a click later with, ::Permission granted. Use full precautions. Be careful, Ratchet.::

::Affirmative.:: Ratchet replied, optics shuttering as he brought up his sandboxing programs and firewalls to maximum security. He only half-listened as Optimus opened the channel fully to Bumblebee, giving him permission to break whatever traffic laws necessary to get to Mikaela's shop as soon as possible.

Ironhide's silent ping skated across Ratchet's awareness. There were no words, just a reminder that he was there and two glyphs: one for "cautious concern" and one for "justified confidence". It was, Ratchet knew, Ironhide-speak for _I'm worried, but I know you can do it._

Ratchet pinged him back with the familiar response: glyphs for "partial negation" and "self-defense subroutine". _Don't worry about me. Watch your own back._

Ratchet dialed down his comms as Optimus finished filling Bumblebee in on the situation. The silence lasted for a long second before Ratchet pulled the data cable out of the pad and plugged it into his own port.

The mystery mech's firewalls were, like everything about him, odd. They weren't weak, merely...predictable. Defaults, Ratchet realized with a shock. It was enough to make him pause, searching for and unarchiving a memory to compare with...yes. The mech's firewalls were exactly the same as a few newly-sparked sparklings Ratchet had treated so very long ago. Somehow, the ease with which Ratchet was able to circumvent those nominal barriers made the whole invasive process--never Ratchet's favorite thing--all the more distasteful.

He was on the defensive as soon as the firewalls were breached, but nothing attacked. The only chatter was the background hum of the mech's OS murmuring to itself. Ratchet swiftly called up the mech's memory files and found them, unsurprisingly, incredibly strange. There was a solid block of files with timestamps that matched the mech's logs, but there were other files as well, positioned to be readable but of oddly small filesizes for the referenced dates, which reached back roughly twenty human years.

Ratchet was getting a very bad feeling about this.

The medic copied all of the available memory files in a matter of seconds and retreated from the mech's core. He popped out the data cable from his port, sent a brief string of "complete success" "no threat" and "searching, please wait for reply" glyphs to the others. He played the copied files from the last hour.

:: _Primus_ :: Ratchet, very carefully, played back only the most recent of the archived files. It read flat and overstimulated at the same time, the sensory details limited but intense. Ratchet startled at the shotgun blast and had to use every bit of his training to watch the rest of the file with a medic's dispassionate analysis.

Multiple questioning pings came over the comm link.

Ratchet opened his optics. ::I think that this mech holds Mikaela's memories--::

::...WHAT?::

Ratchet couldn't even discern who that had been. :Bumblebee, scan Mikaela's shop as soon as you are in range, particularly the garage. Do not panic--::

::I'm in range...scanning....::

::--as you might find--::

::NO!:: Bumblebee's agonized cry made Ratchet feel even worse. He leaned on the table in front of him, feeling suddenly, crushingly old. Damn overachieving youngsters.

Bumblebee sent a burst of information: his scans of the garage, complete with signs of forced entry, the open garage door, and one room-temperature female-shaped human body on the floor. With, Ratchet noted, a powerful, familiar information signature nearly on top of it, though he could tell by Bumblebee's hurried notations that he was not fully understanding its import.

Ratchet sent a hurried, heavily-encrypted message to Optimus. He couldn't include the memories themselves for confidentiality reasons, but he bundled up his summary, his response, his analysis, his suspicions, and also his concern that they might damage their relationship with the humans if this was handled badly--

::Bumblebee, halt. This may not be what it looks like.:: Optimus replied.

::But sir, MIKAELA--::

::HALT.:: With a side glyph of "absolute command authority".

Bumblebee's reply wasn't even vocalized, just a faint, miserable affirmative, followed by a set of coordinates verifying his position at the end of Mikaela's block.

::Ratchet, revive...revive our guest.::

"Wheelie, attach the feed. Quickly." Ratchet started a calming defrag as Wheelie hopped to obey, even though he was out of the comm loop and had no idea what was going on. Ratchet reached up and over, and at Wheelie's "Done, boss!", he started the energon flow. He clicked the data line back into the datapad and gave the reactivation command as soon as the mech's (Ratchet dared not use another name, even in his thoughts, he really didn't) tanks were full enough to allow it.

Ratchet watched as the datapad chronicled the reboot in scrolled code. It was clean, and the automatic internal scans came back error-free, merely noting the medical incursions and Ratchet's designation.

More scrolled logs as the mech's processor came back online, querying its OS in confusion, EM sensors coming online, and then--

"Oh, man, am I glad to see you guys." That voice was familiar. Slightly different, for being filtered through a Cybertonian vocalizer rather than a human voicebox, but familiar.

Wheelie started, turning toward... _her_. Her. "Is...hey, is that...."

"Hey, Wheelie. Yeah, it's me."

Ratchet said softly, "Mikaela. How do you feel?"

"Like I'm having the weirdest night ever. But good...considering I think I died a bit ago. Did I die a bit ago?"

"It is entirely possible," Ratchet replied. He certainly had no other explanation.

"Great. Well, at least I got better." Her voice wavered just a bit, though her tone was one Ratchet recognized as determination. He remembered the look on her face that usually accompanied it: teeth gritted, jaw set, eyebrows lowered, eyes steady. "Ironhide, could you...ease off a bit, maybe? You're giving me all kinds of threat errors that I really don't know how to deal with."

Ironhide just harrumphed and powered down his cannons, which he'd probably forgotten about. Most mechs wouldn't have been able to recognize the look in Ironhide's optics as extreme relief.

"Thanks, 'Hide."

"Died? What...." Wheelie put a hand on... _Mikaela's_ tire. "Warrior Goddess? Is this really...you?"

"Yeah. Really, really me. Hey, stand back, will you? I'm going to try to transform. I'm tired of not being able to look anyone in the eye."

"Take it slowly." Ratchet advised softly. "Can you transform without dislodging the data cable?"

"The what? Oh. That's what that is. Uh...yeah, I think so."

Wheelie ran to the edge of the table, bouncing up and down on his toes, and Mikaela vocalized what sounded like a human taking a deep breath.

It was not the prettiest transformation ever, but then first transformations rarely were. She got stuck twice, once at the beginning, when her torso needed to bend to allow her limbs to emerge, and once nearly at the end, when something in her hands (relatively small and delicate for her framesize, Ratchet noted) ground unpleasantly, but each time there was a muttered curse, then a reversal followed by a successful sequence. She pushed herself up onto her knees on the table, then tried, awkwardly, to move to a sitting position. Ratchet steadied her by the shoulders, keeping one eye on the datapad and noting with satisfaction her proper swift queries to calibrate her gyros and stabilizers.

Physically, she looked fine. Her frame was fairly standard, but she would be, Ratchet calculated, taller than Bumblebee. Perhaps of a size with Sideswipe. Her base configuration was for dexterity rather than power, but her frame was solid enough to support a soldier's armor and weapons, should she need them. With her processor, she'd have her pick of upgrades, really.

"Wow, that's really weird," Mikaela muttered, "It's like my own personal roller coaster." Her hands gripped Ratchet's arms and then didn't let go. Her head came up, and her optics were blue, her face not human but nonetheless human-shaped and incredibly expressive, made of small overlapping plates that gave her a flexibility that Ratchet had not seen inbuilt in a long time.

Mikaela smiled, _bit her lip_ as she always did when she was uncertain, and said, "Thanks. I'm really glad to see you."

"I am glad to see you, as well. You had us worried." Ratchet gently unhooked the data cable, coiling it and setting the datapad aside. Certainly not to cover how relieved he was. Certainly not.

Ratchet realized he'd been ignoring the comm and was relieved to see that Bumblebee was just sending faint, wordless glyphs for thankful joy, over and over. Ironhide, the softspark, had been streaming the whole thing.


	5. Vocabulary Lessons (580 words)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikaela needs some space and some lessons in Cybertronian. Optimus helps with at least one of these things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set a few months after Mikaela is bot-ified. I'll probably mention it in a bigger piece somewhere, but her issue with Cybertronian is that the Allspark started her out with a limited "sparkling" dictionary. So, she can speak Cybertronian, but it's not really natural-sounding, and any of the words adapted from other languages aren't in it and she has to learn them the old-fashioned way. Also, a good deal of Cybertronian is a logographic language - an extremely detailed and insanely complicated set of several million characters, with even more context-based modifiers...and a lot of it wasn't included in Mikaela's new processor.

::Mikaela?::

Mikaela started, rocks rolling under her tires as she jerked on her wheels and looked around instinctively. Damn, the internal comms were hard to get used to. Especially out here, where she was far enough away from the base to not hear everyone's chatter.

She identified the comm at about the same time she saw the Peterbilt coming up the road to the lookout, lights off. She relaxed, then sighed internally. Busted.

::Hey, Optimus. Back from patrol?::

Optimus' reply was amused as he pulled up next to her, air brakes hissing as he cut his engine. ::I am. No Decepticons sighted. Which is fortunate, given that you are out here alone.::

Honestly, how was it that Optimus could guilt her a thousand times harder than her dad ever could? ::I know, I know. I was careful! No transforming! I just...wanted some peace and quiet. Sorry.::

::No harm done. This time.:: His glyphs were more upbeat than the translation: simple acknowledgment that she had taken a gamble and won, with an emphasis on the gamble part.

::I know. Sorry.:: She finished it off, hesitantly, with what she was 90% certain was a glyph of contrite apology. She still felt awkward with using the untranslated glyphs. The "grammar" for them was all contextual, meant to be learned as a sparkling grew, rather than being preprogrammed. She knew that she must sound funny to the 'Bots, but she was making an effort to try. It was the only way to convey "tone of voice" in written Cybertronian, and Bee had said it made her "sound" stiff if she avoided it, which was even worse than the occasional wrong glyph choice.

Optimus responded with surprise, and Mikaela winced. ::Not the right one?::

::No, it was the sentiment I think you were aiming for. But it is a military variant, used for addressing a superior officer.::

::Oh. That makes sense, I guess. I think I heard it from Arcee.::

Optimus paused for a moment, then replied, ::You might try this instead....::

An hour later, the moon rising and her head swimming with new terms, Mikaela was just starting to see the beginning of a pattern in the symbols. Kinda. She ventilated an approximation of a sigh.

::Frustrated?:: Optimus asked.

::Yeah. I mean, I can tell that I'm learning incredibly fast, but it's just so complicated....::

::I can see how you would think so. We thought that human communication was incredibly simple, until we realized that tone of voice, facial expression, and body language also figured in.::

::Oh, man, yeah. I guess that it is about that complicated.::

::Indeed. You are correct, though: you are making excellent progress. You just need more practice.:: Mikaela warmed at the praise, and Optimus' engine turned over beside her, loud in the still night air. ::Come. We both should be getting back.::

Mikaela kicked her own engine on, backing out to follow him as they headed back down toward the highway. ::Thanks for this. I know you've got more important things to do.::

::I truly do not mind. I enjoy teaching.:: A flurry of happy glyphs, bright and round and oddly based in symbols for "sun" and "energon". ::It reminds me of happier times.::

Mikaela smiled to herself. Well, in her head. ::Tell me about it? You know, if you don't mind?::

Optimus, apparently not minding at all, chuckled under the purr of his engine and told her about the Science Division all the way back to the base.


	6. The Peanut Butter Egg Incident (879 words)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikaela has a craving....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about a year or two after Mikaela is bot-ified. DEFINITELY long enough for her to know better....

One day, Ratchet swore, he'd go through an entire day without some idiotic emergency walking into his medbay.

Today was...obviously not that day.

It all started when Mikaela walked (very, very slowly), into the medbay. Ratchet had been in the middle of recalibrating one of his more sensitive energy sensor arrays, but even through the sensor wash of the calibrating run, he could _hear_ it. She _sounded_ wrong, her energy signatures sputtering and flaring, her power levels all over the chart in a familiar way that screamed "imminent power plant failure". As the Decepticons had been quiet lately and there wasn't any external damage he could see, his first question was obvious. "Primus, what did you do to yourself?" 

"Okay, so," she paused, swaying a bit, as her systems chugged again. "I want to say up front that I did something really stupid, and I _know_ that it was really stupid, so you don't need to yell at me. Not that that'll keep you from yelling at me, but I just wanted to...y'know... _say_...."

She wavered on her feet, and Ratchet aborted the calibration in favor of rushing over to keep her from falling flat on her face. Up close, she sounded even worse. The whine of her fuel pump set his sensors on edge. Primus, he'd not heard anything like that since Cybertron, when reasonably pure energon had been rarer than a moment's peace and he'd had to switch out everyone's filters at least once a week to keep the entire army from choking to a literal standstill on their own pollutants. "What. Did. You DRINK. Did Sideswipe give it to you? I swear to Primus, if he's started that still again without letting me check the output first, I'm going to--

"No, no, it wasn't Sides, for once." She gratefully leaned on Ratchet's frame, and rather than deal with her unsteady gait, he pulled most of her weight onto his hip like an overgrown sparkling and hurried her toward the nearest berth.

"What was it, then?"

"There...might have been...a peanut butter egg. Or twenty. In my cube."

Ratchet stopped in the middle of dragging her up onto the berth. "Please tell me that that is some human idiom and you did not _actually_ attempt to--"

"--put chocolate in my energon? Yeah, I totally did." She glanced up at him sheepishly, blue optics pained.

Ratchet considered dropping her on the floor. Clearly that would be the best response, as she was obviously beyond help.

Mikaela wheezed pitifully, her ventilation system chugging. "Oh God, Ratchet, they smelled so good. I know that you guys think that energon is, y'know, the perfect food, but it doesn't TASTE like anything. I know your sensors say that it does, but I remember what FOOD tastes like, and I MISS it, and it's Easter, and there is candy ALL OVER THE PLACE, and they smelled so good and I just wanted a little...just to see if my sensors could kinda taste it the same way I can kinda smell things...."

"And could you?" Ratchet asked, all dangerous mildness as he snapped a line into her port and cycled through his medical codes to get access to her systems. As expected, the first thing he found was an avalanche of fuel pollutant warnings. Sugar. Protein. _Fats_ oh Primus help him this was going to take forever.

"...no," she said mournfully. "My sensors just gave me the Cybertronian equivalent of 'what the hell is this, mayday, mayday' and then...this." She tensed, hissing as her power spiked again. "Ah, shit, that actually HURTS."

"Yes, it DOES, doesn't it? Those power surges will eventually burn out your circuits if your systems don't shut down from lack of fuel first." Ratchet yanked down an energon drip and slammed it home into one of her peripheral lines, then did the same with another tube as a drain on the opposite side. Then he shut down her fuel pump. She yelped but didn't protest as the direct energon feed saturated fritzed and fuel-starved systems.

Ratchet kept an eye on her systems as an entire mech's worth of energon flowed out her arm and into a waste container. Honestly, he'd thought her smarter than this. He'd have to see if he could filter the impurities out, or maybe just dump the whole lot back through the refinery... It wasn't as if they had the fuel to spare....

Mikaela's frame rattled as she shivered convulsively. "It's like...like my foot fell asleep, but it's my whole body," she gritted out.

"I'll take your word for it," Ratchet said flatly.

She winced, expression miserable. "I should have known better. I DO know better. Honestly, Mikaela, what the hell.... I'm really sorry, Ratchet." She vented a sigh, then another as her frame gradually relaxed. Her power systems were almost back to full charge.

"I'm sure you are," Ratchet said, almost kindly, "and if you aren't, you will be by the time I finish cleaning out your systems."

She winced again. "This is going to be painful, isn't it?"

"Full filter change? No. Cracking open and scrubbing out your tank? Yes."

"Oh, God. I suppose that asking you to not tell the others about this is out of the question, too?"

"Absolutely."

"I figured. Just checking."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Mikaela and the Wreckers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/217231) by [darthneko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko)
  * [Adventures of the Neo!Wreckers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/274773) by [darthneko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko), [White Aster (white_aster)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster)




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